Endure
by irukandji
Summary: [Content Warning: Graphic descriptions of a restrictive mindset & restrictive behaviors.] He had been cheated and robbed of accomplishments, potential relationships, experiences, and anything of life possessing value. He was the victim of false claims, becoming neither perfect nor safe nor controlled in starvation. Now no longer restricting, he was forced to accept this.


**Content Warning: Graphic descriptions of a restrictive mindset & restrictive behaviors.**

[USA] National Eating Disorders Association: 1-800-931-2237  
[Canada] NEDIC Helpline: 1-866-663-4220  
[UK] Eating Disorder Association Youth Helpline: 011-44-8456-347650  
[Ireland] Local Helpline: 1890 200 444  
[Australia] Eating Disorders Victoria Help Line: 1300 550 236  
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When intoxicated by restriction, he became blissfully delirious. His fingertips tingled as if tickled by thousands of needles, and his body trembled as if his bones were rattled by earthquakes. His tongue flickered across his flaky lips, and his nails twitched as they scraped the itch from his dry, lusterless skin. Inside his dirtied socks, his toes curled to flex away the cold, and the flutter in his chest constricted his lungs. There was a fog that hazed his vision and a spinning in his head that made it hazardous to move.

When intoxicated by restriction, his days were wasted on frivolous and mundane thoughts. Akin to a calculator, his mind counted each bite of food and each ounce of water he consumed; it cursed every tenth of a kilogram that burdened his body and ran various mathematical equations to determine how much to eat and how much to lose before reaching perfection. In the day, his mind berated him and shamed him for each scent he inhaled and each morsel he sneaked; in the night, his mind flooded him with delectable feasts of every fathomable craving.

When intoxicated by restriction, he was destitute of life. He possessed no emotions other than hunger-induced irritation and sorrow; he possessed no energy to expend on relationships, sympathy, love, or compassion. He was devoid of comprehension for life apart from his disorder, entirely detached from all things and all people he had once adored. Beneath the overwhelming sensation of starvation, his mental agony could easily be ignored. No pain existed that could not be attributed to starvation: the hollowness of depression was the hollowness of hunger; the jitter of anxiety was the jitter of unbalanced electrolytes; the ache of self-hatred was the ache of his atrophying muscles. He was a mere frame of physiological dissatisfaction, possessing no emotion, and utterly dehumanized in starvation.

He existed in a state of euphoric oblivion in restriction. He became absorbed by his hunger; his entire being revolved around it. It was he who decided what to consume, when to consume, and the amount to consume when eating; likewise, it was he who decided what not to consume, when not to consume, and what amount not to consume when eating. Thus, he became the dictator of the hunger he revolved around, and the agony he experienced from starvation was imposed by his own godly hand. Since all pain was a result of hunger, he became the god of his world, controller of his pain, and protectorate of his being. He mastered his flesh with food and coddled his mind with hunger.

It was laughable how idealized and contorted the notions above were. He had treated starvation as a precious savior – worshiped, romanticized, glorified. It was disgusting and irrational, and it was perverted how he perpetually yearned for its poison. Now no longer restricting, he was forced to acknowledge and accept this.

Hunger was worthless; hunger had made _him_ worthless. The economy of his being had been devastated; he produced nothing and he consumed nothing; he suffered in isolation for he harmed others when not in isolation, and now he faced a terribly unpredictable future. He had no comfort and no blindness without hunger, and he faced an unstable road in an unexplored territory of his life defined by recovery.

He had been cheated and robbed of accomplishments, potential relationships, experiences, and anything of life possessing value. He was the victim of false claims, becoming neither perfect nor safe nor controlled in starvation. He was a shell, and he could not imagine that he still contained anything offer-able to the world that had not starved away. He felt defiled and alone.

Change was inevitable. He did not welcome it, but slowly, as he wasted and the days wasted, he realized he desired change more than the monotony of a tedious death. The decision to recover filled him with horrible fear and flooded him with torrents of emotion that had become unfamiliar in starvation; he felt overpowered and defenseless.

Arduously he ate. He despaired with each bite, but there was no secret cure to recovery; one simply must eat; one must have courage. He scraped his silverware across porcelain plates and scarped his teeth along the steel of the silverware just to hear the unbearable sound and gain a moment's distraction from chewing. He imagined the thunderous sound that would explode in the room should he smash all the plates and shatter all the bowls. He fantasized of squashing all the foods into the crevices of the kitchen floor tile and burning it all into a mess as undesirable as himself. He wondered at how wonderful the pain would be if he yanked his fork deep across his skin and watched his boiling blood splatter the furniture as he destroyed that _fucking inferno of a kitchen._

Furious surges of resentment, contempt, and rage ignited his body. Brutal bouts of self-animosity assaulted him; shame made him tremble and frustration at the _entire damned situation_ made him sob. He slammed his head violently against the wall until it throbbed, desperately wondering how hard he would have to do it to kill himself. He cursed so breathlessly and so jumbled the words could have no effect. _Oh gods__,__ he felt – he felt all too much and all too heavily_.

He loathed the process. Recovery combated his most valued impulse: the impulse to resist and avoid pain. To recover meant to tolerate pain without a method of soothing. When bombarded with anguish, he must bite down; he must do nothing; he must only endure it and beg that it someday become bearable. Why he made the decision to survive he was not sure; it must have been the result of a primal instinct for he could not fathom that life in his robbed, grieving, bitter state could be desirable. Yet, undoubtedly, life was repairable, and he was repairable. For now, he must _endure_.

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Authors Note: I couldn't spend another second writing this; I'm sorry if it's rushed, but the opening is so triggering. Recovery feels like hell.


End file.
